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“When I was younger, I wasn’t jealous, but it was like he had all the attention,” Francois said this week in advance of the World Cup season opener in short track at Calgary’s Olympic Oval. “I’m like, ‘Me too. I’m good.’ Even in our family, it wasn’t all about him, but it was more about him.”

With age, Francois began to not only accept the fuss surrounding his big brother. He actually welcomed it.

“As I grew up, I learned how to deal with all that and also be proud of what he is doing,” Francois said. “Because if I wasn’t a skater, I would be proud of my brother and all he has accomplished. And we have a younger brother who is not a speedskater. He’s just the proudest brother who exists in the world.

“If he can handle all that — having two brothers who are Olympians and winning medals — then I can manage my brother having better and more consistent results than me. I’m proud of who I am. I am me, and this is what I can offer.”

Last year, for the first time in his nine-year World Cup career, Francois finally won individual gold in the 500 metres at Nagoya, Japan.

He didn’t have much time to celebrate. A week later, Francois was knocked cold during a race in Shanghai.

“This one guy really fell on my head,” Francois said. “When I woke up, there was this crazy noise in my ears. I was seeing a lot of people, but I didn’t really know where I was.”

The next day, he knew where he was, but the headache and nausea were excruciating.

On the flight home to Montreal via Toronto, the concussed athlete fell asleep on the plane and awoke upon landing. Still groggy, he forgot his custom-made skate boots in the overhead compartment on an Air Canada flight.

Chaos ensued.

“If you ask a skater what you don’t want to lose, it’s your skates,” Francois said. “They are not replaceable. New ones can never be the same.”

The beleaguered skater realized his error once he reached the other side of security and couldn’t force his way back through the doors.

A desperate social media campaign ensued, with the airline finally locating the boots in London four days later.

The news of the recovery came for Francois on his 29th birthday.

“I was probably the most annoying person in the world during that time,” he said. “I was constantly calling the airports in Toronto and Montreal and leaving messages everywhere.”

Now, with his beloved skates back on his feet and his concussion a thing of the past, Francois is shooting for a return to the top of the podium this weekend in Calgary, where he is racing in the 1,500 metres on Saturday and the 500 metres on Sunday.

And if his brother makes it there instead? Well, that’s fine, too.

“Right now, he’s the best skater who ever existed in terms of length of skating,” Francois said, beaming with pride. “He has always been a threat for the podium in every race from the time he was 18 to 32 right now. It’s incredible.

CALGARY — In retrospect, Marie-Philip Poulin realizes she’s partly to blame for a massive drop in work productivity across Canada on Feb 20, 2014.

On a regular basis, she hears confessions from regular, law-abiding citizens in connection with that day, when Canada miraculously came from behind to win gold in women’s hockey at the Sochi Olympics.

“When they realize who I am and what team I play for, they always tell me where they were when they watched the game,” Poulin said this week at the Canadian women’s hockey team fall camp in Calgary. “It amazes me every time. They remember where they were. They remember they were not working, and they tried to catch the game on the computer. Or they were at work, and they were trying to sneak it on their phones. That will always be something special.”

In what was arguably the defining moment for Canada at the Sochi Games, Poulin scored with 54.6 seconds left in regulation — and goaltender Shannon Szabados on the bench for the extra attacker — to send the gold-medal game into overtime against the United States.

At 8:10 of the extra period, Poulin buried a feed from defenceman Laura Fortino to give Canada its fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal.

Although she’s just 24, it wasn’t Poulin’s first golden goal. In 2010, on home ice, Poulin collected both of Canada’s goals in a 2-0 victory over the United States. Then 18, she was the youngest member of the team and earned a spot on the media all-star team with five goals and two assists.

“She’s had an amazing career thus far with Hockey Canada, and it’s only going to get better,” said veteran forward Meghan Agosta.” I’m just happy that she’s on my team.

“She’s so strong, super strong on the puck. She has amazing skill, and she can put the puck in the net.”

Even as a teenager, Poulin showed a knack for timing.

“The puck has been following her around in big games,” says Hayley Wickenheiser. “We’ll have to nickname her Clutch, because she sure has scored some big goals for us.”

Fresh off completing her psychology degree at Boston University, the Beauceville, Que. native moved back to her home province over the summer to prepare for the upcoming season with the Montreal Stars of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. This is her first September without lectures and classes – her first September as a professional hockey player.

Canada’s Marie-Philip Poulin waves the crowd after scoring the game-winning goal in overtime against the United States at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

“I’ve been living in my car for the last couple of summers, so I’m pretty excited to be settled into my apartment in Montreal,” said Poulin, the leading scorer in Boston University history. “I love doing my own thing. I love cooking. At least, I’m trying. I learned from my mom.”

Thankfully, Mom has already dispatched some reinforcements to Montreal.

“She sent me meat sauce, which is my favourite,” Poulin said. “I usually just do veggies, chicken and steak – the easy stuff.”

If Poulin sounds like a humble superstar, it’s because she is one. The 5-foot-6, 159-pounder chalks up the golden goals in Vancouver and Sochi to luck and just happening to be in the right place at the right time. Ego is not her thing. In fact, she sounds like any other young adult living on her own for the first time without the safety net of university.

“Sometimes at school, it was easy, because we had everyone around,” she said. “We had structure at school, and we had coaches who helped us. I’m on my own, being settled in Montreal. So I think it’s going to be a new challenge for me to get settled and get my own little routine down with working out and just being focused and being disciplined.”

Like Crosby, Poulin has accomplished much at a young age — and still has big goals for her future.

“The next Olympics is a dream for me,” she said. “I think it’s a lot of work. Vancouver-Sochi was a dream come true, and now we have another one coming up. I just need to push myself to be better every day – not only as a hockey player, but as a person. It’s a new chapter that’s starting for me.”

NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C. — A man who pleaded guilty to the slaughter of dozens of sled dogs will not spend time in prison, a judge has ruled, concluding the man had the “best interests” of the dogs at heart when he culled the pack near Whistler after a slump in business following the 2010 Olympics.

But while Judge Steve Merrick said he agreed with a psychiatrists’ assessment that Robert Fawcett’s actions were the result of mental instability, he noted: “[You] ought to have anticipated the possibility of the horrific circumstances that could result.”

“It is beyond comprehension as to how this could have occurred,” said Merrick.

The devastating aftermath from the April 2010 killing was laid bare in B.C. Supreme Court for the first time Thursday by Fawcett’s lawyer, who described how hard it was for his client to even listen to details of killing his beloved animals again in court.

REUTERS/Ben NelmsDemonstrators outside the British Columbia provincial court house during the sentencing of Robert Fawcett Thursday.

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“I will never stop feeling guilty for the suffering that the dogs endured that day,” said defense lawyer Greg Diamond, quoting his client.

“I feel like part of me died with those dogs.”

Fawcett admitted in August to killing the dogs in a gruesome tableau over two days following a post-Olympic slump in sales. Court heard he felt forced into the decision when the owners of Howling Dog Tours put an “absolute freeze” on spending, aside from for food and the bare minimum of labour.

At that point, Fawcett was working 150 hours over two weeks to care for the animals and watching their conditions deteriorate to the point where they were fighting and killing each other in their kennel.

“In part, he accepted the burden because he felt he could do it compassionately and he did not want that burden placed on anyone else,” Diamond said.

“He gained the fortitude to do it based largely on the vision the remaining dogs could have a happy life and it was for the greater good.”

Claudia Kwan / HandoutA photo from Outdoor Adventures Whistler, the tour company that ordered the killing of dozens of dogs when bookings slumped after the Olympic Games.

Fawcett huddled into himself with his arms crossed during the proceedings. Women in the gallery openly sobbed and at one point, there was an outburst that was met with a sharp reprimand from the judge.

Fawcett pleaded guilty to one count of causing unnecessary pain and suffering to animals, which relates specifically to the deaths of nine dogs. More than 50 dogs were exhumed from a mass grave in May 2011 as part of a massive forensic investigation by the B.C. SPCA. Court heard most of the dogs that were shot did not suffer.

Animal euthanasia is legal in Canada.

The defense supplied 30 character references to the judge that described the Fawcett’s “admirable dedication” to the dogs, as Diamond asked the court to consider probation but no jail time.

He argued the sentence should be more related to rehabilitation, noting his client has suffered permanent mental damage and has become an “international pariah,” partly due to intense media scrutiny.

He said his client has attempted suicide, has tattooed a ring of dogs around his arm to remember their lives and still shudders when he hears a dog bark.

We’re looking at a very unique set of circumstances

He said the one “silver-lining” that has resulted from the ordeal is legislative reforms that give B.C. some of the toughest animal cruelty laws in the country and set out guidelines related to the retirement of dogs.

Earlier, the Crown also public urged perspective, noting that facts supercede emotions.

Lawyer Nicole Gregoire asked for a sentence of three years probation with conditions, a $5,000 fine, and 200 hours community service.

“We’re looking at a very unique set of circumstances,” Gregoire said.

She too described how Fawcett suffered death threats, had a mental breakdown that sent him to an institution for two months and even had his young children and wife forced into hiding.

He gained the fortitude to do it based largely on the vision the remaining dogs could have a happy life and it was for the greater good

The horrific incident became public January 2011 after a worker’s compensation claim for post-traumatic stress disorder was leaked.

Gregoire said questions remain about the apparent contradiction of how someone who was caring and had a track-record of high-standards could inflict pain on them.

She pointed to a psychological assessment to provide some insight, noting the psychiatrist found Fawcett likely had been experiencing “high levels of distress” leading up to the cull, and likely had disassociated his emotions during the bloody event itself.

The 40-year-old has no criminal record, and the psychiatric assessment said the man is not a threat to people or animals.

The maximum sentence under the Criminal Code is five years prison time and up to $75,000 in fines.

Besides probation, Merrick ordered Fawcett to pay a $1,500 fine, complete 200 hours community work service and may not participate in the sled dog industry or make decisions about euthanizing animals.

]]>stdRobert FawcettDemonstrators outside the British Columbia provincial court house during the sentencing of Robert Fawcett Thursday.A photo from Outdoor Adventures Whistler, the tour company that ordered the killing of dozens of dogs when bookings slumped after the Olympic Games.Former Vancouver Olympics CEO denies abusing students, vows to launch lawsuithttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/former-vancouver-olympics-ceo-denies-abusing-students-vows-to-launch-lawsuit-over-allegations
Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:41:11 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=216613

VANCOUVER — John Furlong, the man who helmed the Vancouver Olympics, has categorically denied allegations that he physically abused aboriginal students as a teacher at two northern B.C. schools decades ago, and says he plans to sue.

The allegations that Furlong hit and kicked students and verbally abused them during his time as a physical education teacher in the late 1960s and early 1970s appeared Thursday in the free Vancouver weekly Georgia Straight.

Within hours, Furlong held a news conference with his lawyer to announce legal action.

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“I categorically deny absolutely any wrongdoing and I believe that the RCMP in looking into this matter will discredit the complaint entirely because it just did not happen,” Furlong told reporters.

Furlong said it was “very troubling” to read the article and the “very serious, unfounded allegations.”

The newspaper story cites eight students whose claims include that he used his foot to slam one of them down on the floor, kicked another in the buttocks, hit one person with a hockey stick and another with a yard stick, and slapped or punched them on the front or the back of the head.

On the very first occasion that this was brought to my attention prior to the Olympic Games, I was advised that for a payment it could be made to go away

One person suggested he called them “good for nothing Indians,” and another said he suffered repeated beatings.

Furlong was a teacher at two Catholic schools in northern B.C., but although he has frequently spoken about his arrival as an immigrant to Canada in 1974, he has not been public about his earlier work at the schools and did not mention his work there in the autobiography released following the 2010 Games.

The former Olympic chief said he is proud of the work he has done with First Nations and his time in the north.

He suggested he didn’t include his time at the school in his book, Patriot Hearts, because the book was dedicated to the build-up and execution of the 2010 Winter Games.

Marvin Storrow, Furlong’s lawyer, said Furlong’s time in the north is well known and he has many existing relationships in the communities in questions.

“Mr. Furlong bears no grudge against anyone, least of all students he coached and worked with, but now has no alternative but to use the courts to seek full and complete recourse for the damage that has been caused to him.”

Furlong suggested there is a “personal vendetta” on the part of the reporter, Laura Robinson.

Robinson could not immediately be reached for comment. The Georgia Straight posted a statement on its website saying Storrow did not make Furlong available to respond to Robinson’s questions.

Mr. Furlong bears no grudge against anyone, least of all students he coached and worked with

“She also attempted without success to reach Mr. Furlong through his publisher, Douglas & McIntyre. Ms. Robinson was told that Mr. Furlong had ‘nothing more’ to say to her,” the statement said.

Furlong said that even before the Games began, he had spoken to the RCMP.

“On the very first occasion that this was brought to my attention prior to the Olympic Games, I was advised that for a payment it could be made to go away and, as such, I reported the matter to police,” a grim-faced Furlong said at a news conference at which he took no questions because the matter is now a matter for the courts.

RCMP confirmed they are aware of the allegations and are investigating, but would comment no further.

MONTREAL — The greatest player in hockey returns to Montreal on Saturday for his first game at the Bell Centre in more than 18 months, his first in Canada in 11 months to the day. But who — apart from every fan in the country — is counting?

It will be Sidney Crosby’s 12th career National Hockey League game at the Bell Centre, his ninth in the regular season, and in a moment we’ll dip into the Pittsburgh Penguins superstar’s interesting lifetime performance against the Canadiens.

First let’s rewind to the curiously delayed start of Crosby’s first game in Montreal, on Jan. 3, 2006.

It was his second time facing the Canadiens, the first on Nov. 10, 2005, in Pittsburgh. Crosby scored the sixth goal of his career on one of his five shots that night at the Igloo, then won the game by scoring the shootout’s only goal. Now he was in Montreal, about to play the club he’d grown up cheering, the team that in 1984 had drafted a goaltender named Troy Crosby — Sidney’s father. (The elder Crosby never played for Montreal, but the Canadiens did fine with Patrick Roy, the other netminder they drafted that year.)

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The national anthems had been sung and the Bell Centre was loudly abuzz with anticipation of seeing Crosby, the peachfuzzed player with otherworldly talents who was just five months past his 18th birthday.

Canadiens captain Saku Koivu cruised near centre ice across from Crosby for the start of the game, the puck in veteran referee Don Koharski’s hand. But then Koharski briefly delayed the opening faceoff, leaning in to the Penguins phenom for a quick word. Standing in the penalty box, its door open, was Canadiens photographer Bob Fisher, his lens focused on two Nova Scotians: the referee, a native of Dartmouth, and Crosby, of Cole Harbour.

“I said to Sid, ‘C’mere. See that guy over there in the penalty box with the camera? He wants to take a picture of the two legends from Nova Scotia,’ ” Koharski said in a March 2009 talk, on the eve of hanging up his whistle after 32 NHL seasons.
The referee burst into laughter at Crosby’s reply.

“Sid just looked at me and said, ‘Yeah? Well, where’s the other one?’ ”

Crosby gave a goofy grin to Fisher, Koharski still talking to him, and the photo, which would find its way onto a wall in the referee’s Florida home, was snapped.
Crosby was born an adult, judging by that kind of quick-thinking quip from a teenager about to skate on arguably the grandest stage in his sport. Then, cleanly to Koivu in a shower of camera flashes, he lost his first Bell Centre faceoff. It was one of 11 draws Crosby would lose that night, his three wins giving him a success rate of just 21 per cent. He also took a penalty, an inconsequential minor for hooking.

But look fully across his impressive stat line: two goals scored on five shots, two more shots that missed, 18:59 of ice time, three take-aways and no giveaways in the Penguins’ 6-4 victory.

Crosby scored on his first shot in Montreal, using winger Ziggy Palffy as a decoy on a 2-on-1 break before snapping a 25-footer past Canadiens goalie Jose Theodore at 4:33 of the first period. It was hard to tell the goal had been scored by a visiting player, the Bell Centre erupting and a camera pan showing fans grinning no matter the jersey they wore.

Crosby’s second goal came 1:58 into the third period to break a 4-4 tie, sweeping the tight rebound of a Matt Murley shot behind Theodore. Just as Crosby was burying the shot, Canadiens icon Jean Beliveau was being interviewed on the FSN Pittsburgh telecast, from his usual seat three rows behind the Habs bench.

“Usually a youngster, if they’re 18 or 19 years old, it takes a year or two before you get adjusted to the speed of the game,” Beliveau said as the Penguins began a rush up ice. “But him, he has everything. Natural talent, great ability, he looks physically strong” — Crosby scored in Beliveau’s mid-sentence — “and I’m always happy when there’s a youngster coming up like that. It’s good for the game.”

Of course, there hasn’t been another youngster “like that” since Crosby landed in the NHL, no disrespect to the superb young players who have arrived on the scene. And here’s the peculiar twist: Crosby’s two goals that night, the 20th and 21st of his career, were the only ones he’s had on Bell Centre ice in regular-season play. Add one more in the post-season, scored in Game 6 of the 2010 Eastern Conference semifinal, his most recent visit here. The Canadiens smothered Crosby in that seven-game series, surrendering to him just one goal and four assists.

Four times, he was held without a point; four times, he was allowed just one shot. In eight lifetime regular-season games in Montreal, Crosby has added five assists to his two goals, has taken 18 shots and is minus-2 with six penalty minutes.

He has missed four scheduled games in this city — a pair in 2008, nursing a high ankle sprain, and two more last January in the days immediately following two hard hits that shelved him with a concussion until last Monday. A wonky knee also prevented Crosby from taking part in Montreal’s 2009 All-Star Game, having garnered a record 1,713,021 fan votes. He did drop in, however, to glad-hand league sponsors with his storeys-high likeness wrapped around the north face of the Bell Centre.

Crosby has been much more prolific against the Canadiens in Pittsburgh. In 11 career games at home, he’s had nine goals (including an October 2009 hat trick on nine shots), 10 assists, taken 41 shots and been plus-4 with eight penalty minutes.
With him in uniform, the Penguins have beaten the Canadiens 10 times, lost seven in regulation and dropped two more in overtime; in the playoffs, three wins and four losses.

Statistics, of course, are only a small part of the story for Crosby, a Stanley Cup champion, winner of the Art Ross, Hart and Maurice Richard trophies and author of Canada’s heart-stopping overtime winner against the U.S. in the gold medal game of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Crosby became the face of the post-lockout NHL, a luminescent talent who had grown up in front of the cameras as a brilliant junior. He was a man-child comfortable with the role thrust upon him, a rare figure who transcended his sport.

Hockey’s spirit sagged when Crosby was injured last season, in every arena was he was unable to play and in the community barns nationwide and beyond where kids wore his No. 87 jersey. His concussion reshaped NHL rules, and his stunning return to action Monday surely was following a script: a magnificent goal on his first shot, two goals and a pair of assists by night’s end.

On Saturday, three games deep in his comeback, Crosby makes Montreal his first stop on the road, 565 days since we saw him last. May he flourish in good health.
Canadiens fans will be delighted to see the most compelling player in hockey, and for a spell they might even embrace him. They also will be most pleased if he doesn’t again score on his first shot on Bell Centre ice.

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]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/sports/nhl/montreal-awaits-return-of-crosby-show/feed0stdSaturday will be Sidney Crosby’s 12th career National Hockey League game at the Bell Centre in Montreal, and his ninth in the regular season.Stephen Harper on hockey and headshotshttp://news.nationalpost.com/sports/stephen-harper-on-hockey-and-headshots
http://news.nationalpost.com/sports/stephen-harper-on-hockey-and-headshots#respondSat, 29 Oct 2011 13:30:59 +0000http://sports.nationalpost.com/?p=53416

In his introduction to a new book by Paul Henderson, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a lifelong hockey buff, contemplates the origins of the game, the outrage of shots to the head in the NHL, and more.

When people ask me about Canada’s greatest moments in international play, I have to answer carefully because to some extent it’s a generational thing. I don’t want to take anything away from the Sidney Crosby goal or the 2010 Olympics victory. It had a huge significance, especially for any Canadian that was much younger than I am. This was the moment of their lives in hockey. It also happened to coincide with Canada reaching a record number of 14 gold medals that day. That was a pretty special thing for the country, and the hockey win was the centrepiece. But I think so many of us that are from that older generation would argue that the 1972 Summit Series was different in two ways.

Of course what were similar were these big Canadian victories in significant international encounters with a massive percentage of Canadians captivated by them. Those two occasions — that 1972 Game 8 final and the 2010 gold-medal game—were watched by virtually everyone. They shut down the entire country. In those two ways they were similar, both huge moments, both exciting, and both thrilling victories. The differences are at the bigger level. The first is that in terms of hockey, the game between Canada and the United States was a game between two teams of players that, while all the passion and competition was there, compete with each other in the National Hockey League and essentially play the same style of hockey. The game in ’72 was between two hockey worlds, featuring athletes who did not know each other and didn’t approach the game in remotely the same way or play the same style.

It was a different experience and maybe one that could never be repeated. I’ve tried to explain the bigger context of that series to my kids and other people who were not alive then. As the series progressed, the intensity rose. In particular the experience of Canadian fans with the police in Moscow became a kind of symbol of the Cold War. It actually became a confrontation of systems, a confrontation of values. It became a microcosm of the fact that Canada was allied with the West against Communism and the East in the Cold War.

My memory of that period is particularly sharp about things that were happening in the stands, things like the mugging of Alan Eagleson. It really became a proxy for war and that puts it on a completely different level. The Cold War has been over for 20 years now and no one who was not alive in 1972, and certainly no one who was not alive during the Cold War, could know the feeling that existed between the two different ways of life in the world at the time. It was as if the freedom of Canadians versus the repression of the Soviet system was being showcased in the individualism of the Canadian players as opposed to the regimentation of the Soviet players. It was there for everyone to see.

In fairness to them, there was some significant artistry to what they were doing and in criticism of us, although there was a lot of individualism, there was in fact a lot of pretty unimaginative play. But that said, even the way they wore their hair showed the individualism of the Canadian players as opposed to the cog-in-the-machine approach of the Soviets. For everyone alive at the time, it became more than just a game. It wasn’t really about whether we were going to win at hockey. What it came down to was whether the system of a free people was going to triumph over the system of one that had no respect for individuals. Now, if you weren’t alive then, that sounds almost bizarre. I was 13 years old at the time and obviously wasn’t anywhere near as political in those days as I am now, but I was of that time. For someone who was right of centre, it was an event that reminded Canadians of why we were in the Cold War. It was a pretty important moment in history.

You didn’t need a classroom to learn this history lesson. You could see it happening right before your eyes, the whole concept that because fans were too boisterous at a game they could be arrested for cheering too loud. We had our apologists trying to say that we weren’t really that different — and then you see that.

There’s probably a lot I’d change about today’s game, but probably most fundamentally, if I had my perfect world, I would make the ice surface somewhere between the NHL and the international dimensions. I think it needs to be expanded. I think the international ice is too large but we could use a bit of alteration — that’s probably the most fundamental.

There are many other things. I guess the thing on my mind these days continues to be this problem with the equipment and head shots. This Sidney Crosby thing really has me just furious. I saw the hit in the Washington game and I couldn’t believe it — no penalty, no suspension, no complaint from the Penguins.

I find this amazing and as someone who followed the Oilers’ Cup teams, I couldn’t imagine someone doing that to Wayne Gretzky, I just can’t. I’m mystified by it, but I hope the powers that be wake up. I’m concerned that Sidney Crosby is not back. This is the best player in the game today, and if this is as serious as it’s starting to look, then I think the game has to really look at itself. You cannot allow this kind of thing to happen.

– From the foreword of How Hockey Explains Canada, by Paul Henderson and Jim Prime. Excerpted with permission of the publisher Triumph Books. Copyright (c) 2011 by Paul Henderson and Jim Prime.

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — There are four other skaters on the ice, but he does not notice them. For this moment, few realize there is anyone but him, the world champion. Adagio, from Concierto de Aranjuez, drips out of the speakers. He carves the sheet beneath his blades, and glides around the rink better than most people can walk.

He pivots on one blade and slows down as he begins moving backward. He glances behind him, but as soon as his eyes peek over his left shoulder he is in the air, spinning. At the other end, a competitor tries a similar leap but tumbles to the ice. The champion lands easily.

And as he drives, unsmiling and shoulders back, around each corner the other skaters move away quickly, but he still does not notice them. He says he sees the rink the way Derek Jeter sees the batter’s box or Peyton Manning sees the line of scrimmage. The ice belongs to him.

“You can tell they have been there before,” Patrick Chan says of the dominant athletes. “They have done it a million times and they feel really comfortable in their skin. That is what I want to be able to do.”

It is not arrogance, he and Skate Canada officials say, and this is not a new Patrick Chan for this weekend’s Skate Canada International. He thinks his 2011 world championship title helped him grow into the self-reliant skater he always wanted to be, sparkling with the confidence Canadians always hoped he would have.

“Now it is about fulfilling my own desires,” Chan says. His toothy smile is the only thing you notice when he is off the ice. “And that is to skate more freely and I’m able to do that now because [he feels he has] no pressure, as opposed to some people who feel I have more pressure.”

With his gold-medal, record-breaking performance in Moscow, Russia, last April, Chan joined Brian Orser, Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko and Jeffrey Buttle on the list of Canadian men who have been world champions in the last quarter-century. Yet their inability to turn global conquest into Olympic gold does not scare or motivate the 20-year-old. Chan, who finished fifth at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, says the world title set him free. Now the only man he is in competition with is the man in the mirror.

“I take ownership of myself and I’m the guy who is making the final decision. I am the CEO or president of my own corporation,” he says. “Before the Olympics, I was listening to a lot of people and getting a lot of opinions and feedback and kind of taking it too much to heart.”

Now Chan says he weighs any word from anyone against what he wants. Even coach Christy Krall’s regimented schedule is up for debate. And when the two sat down to plan his new free skate, they trimmed down the technical aspect of the program. There are now just two quads and one triple Axel, as opposed to two quads and two triple Axels in Chan’s long program last season. The Toronto skater, who trains in Colorado Springs, Colo., knows training partner Brandon Mroz just landed a quad Lutz this week, but Chan is not scrambling to beef up his routine.

“It is dangerous,” he says. “Sometimes you can get motivated and start working on the wrong things and I think right now is not the right time to work on a quad Lutz, even though I want to. It might not be the best choice right now.”

It sounds like an excuse similar to the ‘quads do not win gold’ deflection he made after he said he would not add the difficult jump to his program before the Vancouver Olympics. But then Chan’s self-belief bubbles to the surface again when he says a point total of 300 would be a new “benchmark of perfection.” His short program (93.02), free skate (187.96) and point total (280.98) at the world championships all broke records. Chan tries to dismiss the idea of reaching 300 as quickly as he gushes over its value, but he cannot betray a newfound pride in his championship abilities. Maybe even a bit of cockiness, because he likes knowing all the world’s eyes are on him now.

“For me, as long as I can skate and skate well, I can sense the air in the rink is different. Then for me it is like reaching 300,” he says. “You can hear the buzz, you can hear people talking within each other and to each other about the program. And then you go back stage and people are talking about the program and they will give you feedback.”

“I really want to draw people’s emotions out of them and bring tears to their eyes or something. That is my goal.”

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — As Canadian figure skaters practised for this weekend’s Skate Canada International, Mike Slipchuk, Skate Canada’s high performance director, said he and several of the country’s top coaches would not be analyzing the performances of world champion Patrick Chan or Olympic ice dance champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. Their eyes instead will be focused on the Canadian skaters participating in their first International Skating Union Grand Prix

“It is good because we’re at home with a home crowd. It is like a bigger national championship, in a sense, because of the international flavour,” Slipchuk said. “The skaters we tend to bring here are the ones that are just on the cusp of pushing that top group.”

There are debuts in every discipline. Reigning world junior champion Andrei Rogozine, 18, of Richmond Hill, Ont., and former Canadian junior champion Elladj Baldé, 21, of Pierrefonds, Que., are looking to become Canada’s second and third choice behind Chan. Adriana DeSanctis, 21, of Barrie, Ont., is attempting to solidify a place on the women’s team. Vancouver’s Tarrah Harvey, 21, and Keith Gagnon, 23, are former Canadian junior medallists in ice dance. And Jessica Dubé, 23, a former world bronze medallist in pairs, has a new partner in Sébastien Wolfe, 21, of Terrebonne, Que.

They will be joined on the ice by Chan, Moir and Virtue, 2010 men’s world champion Daisuke Takahashi of Japan and current world pairs silver medalists Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov of Russia.

“It gives us a good indication, with all of them, of how they handle the big stage and being on the ice with world champions and world medalists and Olympics champions,” Slipchuck said.

As the season progresses, Slipchuk says the national association will secure those skaters who are consistent in the season’s six Grand Prix events and perform well at the 2012 World Championship in Nice, France. The better Canadians perform, the greater chance three Canadian competitors in each discpline will earn spots for the 2013 world championships in London, Ont., and the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

“The skaters that make a difference on how many athletes will be on those [Canadian teams] aren’t really the champions, because they can only go so high,” Slipchuk said. “It is our second and third entries in each discipline … The ISU cutoff is 13th place.”

But Slipchuck is not setting any expectations. He and Skate Canada’s other senior coaches are waiting to see what the emerging talent has to offer.

“We’ve learned we have to be patient,” he said, “and we have to give them time to develop and go over their peaks and valleys and kind of ride the wave with them.”

The CanadiansA look at the Canadian entries at this weekend’s Skate Canada International in Mississauga:

David Milzman is an emergency medicine physician, professor at Georgetown and Washington Hospital Center and the ER doctor on site at Washington Capitals home games. The medical trainers, the guys who rush out on the ice, do most of the work, but “anything that isn’t attached to a bone, they get nervous and call me,” he explains.

Dr. Milzman has a particular interest in head trauma, and he is “absolutely convinced” that the National Hockey League is correct to worry about the link between blows to the head and concussions. Now that more is known about their long-term harm, he agrees, concussions should not be treated as a good, old-fashioned bell-ringing.

And yet, Dr. Milzman is not a hand-wringer on the topic of hockey fights. He is not, as a certain drapery-festooned television commentator might say, one of the “pukes.”

“The fights aren’t causing the concussions,” he says in an interview. “I can say that without a doubt.”

It is a claim that makes sense, if you think about what typically happens in a hockey fight. Two guys grab each other with one hand and start throwing punches wildly with the other. They are as likely as not to land a blow on a helmet. And because they are on skates, they sway back and forth or around in circles. Rarely is a clean shot successfully delivered.

“When you’re on ice,” Dr. Milzman says, “you get all the power off your front foot. Whether you are holding a jersey or not holding a jersey, you just don’t get the transfer of power because your front foot is moving and the thing you are hitting is moving.”

Dr. Milzman’s observations are not just limited to anecdotes. He and a group of researchers have been studying NHL fights — literally watching slow-motion replays of every exchange of punches in the league last season — and they believe they have statistical evidence to back up his assertions. They documented 710 fights in 1,239 pre-season and regular-season games, and counted 17 injuries, for a rate of 1.12% per combatant per fight. His top-line conclusion: the risk of injury from a hockey fight is “pretty damn low.”

The research, which began more than a year ago, was originally intended to compare hand injuries — “metacarpal injuries,” in the fancy doctor lingo — between hockey fights and those that take place on land. But the research took on greater significance after the NHL’s terrible summer in which three players, all of whom had been known to drop gloves, died at their own hand. Were injuries suffered while fighting partly to blame? Sides were taken. Don Cherry even had unpleasant things to say about Chris Nilan, a one-time Bruin.

But the research of Dr. Milzman and partners, an abstract of which has appeared in the Annals of Emergency Medicine as the full study undergoes peer review, suggests that the link between fighting and brain injury should at the least be approached with caution.

Dr. Milzman and colleagues acknowledge that their numbers are not completely reliable, since hockey players are not at all forthcoming about the extent of the injuries they might have suffered. But they found that team lineups reflected what they observed on video: in only 17 instances did players miss games after a fight.

Players can, and do, get hurt in hockey fights, of course. One of Dr. Milzman’s research partners, an aspiring Toronto medical student named Kyle Pasternac, presented their “no serious injuries” data at a conference just after Washington’s Jay Beagle had been relieved of consciousness in a tussle with Pittsburgh’s Arron Asham — an unfortunate bit of timing that my Postmedia colleague Cam Cole wryly noted in a column last week. But the researchers noted only three concussions resulting from fights last season, out of those 710 encounters, a tiny percentage that Dr. Milzman attributes to physics. He wants to study the mechanics further, but estimates that a punch thrown on ice lands with 15% of the force of a punch thrown on land.

There is also the fact that a lot of fighters don’t actually fight all that often. In the season prior to his death last month, Wade Belak fought twice. According to hockeyfights.com, he never fought more than 11 times in any of the seasons dating back to 2003-04. (The league leaders in fighting majors are typically around 25 per season.) In his case at least, the opportunities for a punch-induced concussion were rare.

It is worth noting at this point that I’m not in the camp that believes fighting is an essential part of hockey. The best hockey games of my lifetime, the gold-medal games in the 2010 Olympics, 2002 Olympics and 1987 Canada Cup, were bereft of pugilism. (That there are no NHL games on that list belies the fact I live in Toronto.) If the NHL wants to phase it out, fine.

But the debate over whether the league should continue to crackdown on headshots should not be conflated with the debate over whether fighting has a place in hockey. They are separate debates. (And again, I say yes and not really.)

“It’s easy to point fingers at the NHL,” says Dr. Milzman, but he reiterates that fighting is not the problem.

“Look, I just did an MMA event in Washington as the ringside doctor. There were nine fights on the card, and seven of the guys I sent to the hospital.”

That doesn’t happen due to fights in hockey, he says. The problem is one of high-speed collisions, and so much that is unknown about the brain injuries that result from them.

“We just don’t have a way right now to pick out what’s a serious concussion and what isn’t,” he says.